She saw darkness pouring out of the second-floor bedroom, sinking in a black wave. A hissing filled her ears.
"Libby?"
Only the hissing, carried down on the currents to enfold her.
The darkness flowed across the floor, stirred by a movement beyond the headboard of the bed.
The pale glow of the moon defined the elm tree outside the window. Contrasted against the blackness its branches seemed larger now, extending into the room itself. Then another fragment of glass cracked like an icicle and fell from the pane, and she knew that it was inside.
A long, misshapen tree limb had broken through the window and now reached toward her, beckoning her with its crooked finger to come closer. The bed sparkled with diamond-like shards as the wind blew in. The poker went cold in her hand.
"Libby, where are you?"
Was that a body on the bedclothes, or only the sheets driven into snowdrifts under the fall of splintered glass?
"In here…"
Her head jerked to the right, where the voice came from.
She turned to the bathroom, holding the poker in front of her.
She tapped the door. It was locked.
"Libby?"
"I'm taking a whiz, do you mind? I'll be out in a minute."
The remark snapped her back to reality. It was so like Libby, who was her friend. Just that. Friends don't hurt friends. And they see to it that no one else does, either.
"The window," said Jenny, "did you see? I need to cover it…."
"Wait, I'll help you."
"That's all right. I'm going downstairs. Maybe there's a board or something."
She used the poker to tap her way to the landing. Coming downstairs, she saw that the air was thick with smoke. The newspapers had burned to fragile embers.
The flue, she thought. That's why it's backing up.
She went to the fireplace.
The lever in the bricks was only slightly warm when she pulled it. The flue opened and the room began to clear. She picked up a sawdust log and dropped it into the grate, sending a flurry of red ashes up the chimney. The wrapping burned away and the compressed log caught fire at one end with a cool flame and smoldered.
She left the hearth and continued on to the hall.
What could she use to repair the window? There might be a piece of plywood in the backyard; she was not sure. If there was it probably would not be wide enough. She could push the dresser over in front of the upstairs window, but that meant moving the bed. Even with Libby's help it would be back-breaking.
A sheet of plastic would work for now, even a blanket. She could tack it to the wall. She knew that Lee kept a hammer and nails in the drawer….
On her way, she heard something fall.
The sound was very close by, but muffled.
That meant it came from either the downstairs bathroom or the guest bedroom.
She raised the poker and pushed the first door all the way back. Firelight flickered down the hall from the living room, now bright enough for her to see that the extra bedroom was empty.
She had to turn the knob on the second door.
The guest room was a jumble of cardboard boxes, containing books and papers she and Lee had never bothered to unpack. The single window in the back wall was covered by a roll-down shade, a rectangle slightly less dark than the rest of the room because of the moonlight outside. Framed against the shade were several stacked cartons with their flaps up.
Jenny spotted an opening between the cartons, forming a gap wide enough for someone to sit. One of the boxes must have toppled over.
Why?
She imagined rats at work in the shadows of the house, and shuddered. The wind moaned and leaves and twigs pelted the roof, but that was not enough to cause a box to fall, was it? Even now she thought she saw a red eye peering at her from the darkest corner.
Surely that was only her imagination.
I'll take care of it in the morning, she thought, and started to draw the door shut, when she heard a sound from the living room.
She looked to her right, as if down a long tunnel, a cave at the end of which a feeble campfire was all there was between her and the night. The fire was dwindling again.
Instead of going on to the kitchen, she returned to the living room.
She saw someone standing over the fire. Someone with large shoulders and a thick body.
It was only Libby in her heavy coat. Jenny recognized her short haircut, barely outlined against the wavering hearth. She was attempting to turn the log by hand before the flames went out.
Jenny came up behind her and touched her shoulder.
"Libby?"
The other woman started, her shoulders drawing up under Jenny's fingers, and pivoted. Her face was white.
"Jesus!"
"Sorry…."
Libby's features were lost to the backlight. "Where were you?"
"I was just…"
"Forget it." Why was Libby whispering, her voice no louder than a hiss? "Come over here."
"What—?"
Libby snatched her wrist and dragged her into the shadows. "Listen," she said, "don't panic or anything, but—"
"What?"
"I think someone's here."
"Where?"
"In the house. Stay cool." But it was Libby's voice that now quavered. "There was a poker by the fireplace, remember? I saw it. Well, it's not there now."
"I know," Jenny said.
"You do?"
"It's right here." She held up the poker. "I took it with me. Just in case."
Libby started to laugh, tried to suppress it, then threw her head back and let rip. The tension poured out of her until Jenny thought it would never stop.
"Oh, honey," Libby said, "I'm supposed to be the realist! I'm so sorry…."
The laughter bubbled forth again and tears appeared in Libby's eyes. Jenny watched her shake with hilarity, saw her face transfigured as so much pent-up emotion was set free at last. She felt her own mouth widening into a smile, mimicking her friend, whose face was visible only as a line of small white teeth and two jewel-like tears where her eyes would be. Jenny giggled, then forced herself to turn away before the laughter became hysteria.
She stirred the fire, using the poker, releasing more red embers to spiral up the chimney. The log popped, giving off heat, but cold air still chilled her back.
She glanced around at the living room and hall behind her, and saw the walls licked by a reflection of the flames, as if her house and everything in it were about to catch fire and burn. At least I'll be warm, she thought, as one of the embers floated across the room between bands of smoke that hung motionless on the air.
Why, she wondered, would a spark move sideways, away from the updraft? It didn't make sense. It was dangerous, as well; the furniture or the drapes might truly catch fire when the ember settled.
Then she felt Libby's hands on her, rubbing her arms.
"You must be so cold," Libby said, no longer whispering. "Come here." She stepped in front of Jenny and drew her close. "Let me warm you."
"No, really, I'm—"
"Come on."
Well, it was only a hug, and for a moment it felt good. Libby was her friend. Like the sister she never had.
And, thinking that, she pulled away.
Something was not right.
Where had Libby gone this afternoon, after lunch? And tonight, when they left the house together and Libby went ahead to the front gate; where was she during those lost minutes?
At the rec room?
"Libby, where…?"
She held Jenny at arm's length and looked at her straight on in the firelight, with a direct, uncomplicated expression.
"Hm?"
"I mean, I…"
Jenny broke contact with her eyes. She was not sure what she wanted to say or how to say it, but she needed to know. She had to hear it from Libby's own lips.
"Where—?"
"What is it, Jen?"
"Nothing, I guess."
Now, out of the comer of her eye, she thought she saw the ember from the fireplace floating back this way, from the hall. Or could it be something else—the red eye of a rat, say?
She looked past Libby and saw that she was right. It was no ember. It was a red light, sharp and focused, and with it came a cloud of darkness, a shape that had no form as long as it kept moving, nearer and nearer to Libby's back.
"Libby, what is that? Who—T
The other woman tilted her head with amusement and shrugged. Her lips moved uncertainly. "Jenny, I don't know what you—"
Suddenly Libby's eyes bulged and her head jerked forward, cut off in mid-sentence, as a thick wooden stick struck her across the back of the head. Her lips remained open, unable to find any more words. She did not even blink as a trail of blood ran down her forehead, collected at the end of her nose and dripped onto the carpet in a starburst. Then she collapsed like a rag doll.
In her place was a tall, dark figure, taller by several inches than Jenny, with a short helmet of hair that glittered red, then yellow, then gray, then red again as the fire burned higher.
"Jennifer —"
Only one person had ever called her that.
As the light caught the face full on, Jenny saw the big woman's mouth stretch into a vacant smile, her eyes giving off a strange light, a flame in each black pupil.
"Mother!"
The woman stood there, her walking stick in one hand, the cordless telephone with its flickering LED in the other.
"Don't worry, darling. I'm here."
Jenny backed up, shaking her head violently, as if that would cause her to wake up. But the woman really was there, and Libby's body was crumpled at Jenny's feet, lying across her shoes, holding her in place.
"Mother, what have you done?"
"Now there's no one between us."
"But—!''
"Don't thank me. It's only what any mother would do."
Jenny gaped at her. In the rapidly changing light she saw the big, rawboned woman, the broad shoulders and close-set eyes, the weathered face and the insanely fixed grin. She saw the long, anachronistic dress streaked with dirt, a hole tom under one arm, the heavy shoes, the peculiar angles of her posture, like one of the homeless, living in rags. The woman opened her arms.
"Now we can be together."
"You," said Jenny. "It was you."
"Come to me, darling…."
Jenny raised the poker reflexively. "Don't come any closer."
"But Jennifer, I only wanted to help you…."
Jenny struggled to free her ankle from Libby's fallen body. "You killed Tip, didn't you?" she said, incredulous.
"Stupid man! He didn't deserve to live."
"And Walter?"
"That poor fool. It was his fault….He cost us money!"
Her mother's singsong voice dropped to a harsh rasp. It was the other voice now.
Jenny realized that she had to follow every word, to limit her thoughts to the interior logic of the moment, however twisted it might be, in order to get through this crisis. Any distraction, any upsurge of emotion and she was lost. It was like a game, but one where her sanity and her very survival were at stake.
"Whose money?" she said. "It's not yours. It never was."
"Just you wait. When one door closes, another opens….Liz will make us rich, you'll see! All the things your father never provided. A big enough house, so we can see each other every day…like sisters!"
"How long have you been here?" Jenny asked with perfect, blinding clarity.
"Not long. The hotel is adequate, but I'm ready for larger quarters. I think I'm going to like California."
That was why she had never answered when Jenny tried to call her. She was already here. Poised like a vulture, ready to swoop down and claim the bounty, as soon as the deal was set.
"You were here a week ago," said Jenny. "Weren't you?"
"So sunny! A perfect day for the mountains…"
Jerry and Adrienne never made it that far, Jenny thought.
"You killed them, too, didn't you? The brakes—was that how you did it, Mother?"
"White trash! They weren't family. They tried to marry into our money…."
We're the white trash, thought Jenny. And you still are.
"That's right," she said, "our money. Lee's. And mine."
Jenny heard her own words resounding off the bricks of the fireplace, punctuated by clicks and pops and the creaking of the house in the wind. Her house, hers and Lee's. She thought her own voice sounded as unreal as her mother's, like the banal dialogue from a TV movie about a mother's attempts to reconcile with her estranged daughter and the daughter's stubborn rejection of her mother's love, because her mother was completely out of her head.
"Lee isn't in the picture anymore." And the woman smiled with satisfaction, as if proud of a secret that only she knew.
"What do you mean? He—he's coming home. Soon. Any time now."
"Is he?"
A fear greater than any Jenny had ever known before swept through her chest and settled in the bones of her body. Her heart was beating so fast that she was afraid it would burst.
She grabbed the phone from her mother's hand.
"What are you doing, dear?"
"Calling the police."
"Go ahead," said her mother. "But it doesn't work. I know—I tried to call out, to find you another agent. The line's dead."
"Where's my husband?"
"At peace."
Jenny threw the phone at her mother. The woman ducked and it missed, its red light tumbling into the shadows.
"Why don't you kill me, too? I'm no good, either! That's what you always said!"
"You had your father's curse, you poor, pathetic thing. You ran away, the same as he did…."
Did he run away? thought Jenny. Or did he only try to, before you stopped him?
"But now you'll know what it means to be on your own," her mother said. "You'll come back to me."
Jenny was losing it, but she didn't care, not anymore.
"Don't bet on it," she said, and swung the poker at the hideous grin.
Her mother stepped easily to one side, avoiding the blow. Just as quickly she drew back her free hand and slapped Jenny across the mouth.
Jenny took the blow without flinching, and tasted blood.
"You bitch," she said.
The woman slapped her again.
"Go to hell," Jenny told her.
Her mother slapped her a third time.
"Don't you hurt her!"
It was Libby, on her knees now, clawing her way up the woman's body.
Jenny's mother brought the handle of the stick down hard, striking Libby with unbelievable force. Libby's eyes went wide with shock and rolled up. Blood coursed from her scalp.
Jenny saw the stick still swinging back and forth like a pendulum in her mother's hands, and realized what it really was. An inverted silver blade hung from the other end, half-hidden by the folds of the long dress. Before Libby could move again, the woman turned the handle around and swung it again. This time the blade cleaved Libby's head into two halves, spattering her brains across the carpet.
Jenny backed off, unable to accept what she was seeing.
Time slowed.
She saw her mother turning this way, her mouth contorted by a hungry grin, her eyes blank as tunnels with nothing at the other end. She saw her mother moving toward her in slow motion, dragging the heavy axe, one arm reaching out for an embrace, the stains on her dress dark brown. She heard her mother's voice break down into an animal growl.
"Come…to… mother!"
She saw the poker in her own hand, positioned to ward off any blow. But the blow did not come. Instead her mother continued to rush her, fingers attempting to deflect the poker so that she could get closer. And as the fire popped Jenny saw herself thrusting the poker forward with all her weight behind it and then her mother's chin striking iron, the smile distending crookedly, the lips flapping to shape more useless words before they ran with crimson. Jenny stepped back under the impact and one foot came down in the fireplace. She heard a sizzle as her sock melted, glanced down and saw the log breaking apart in a burst of fireworks but felt nothing. She held herself upright with the poker and withdrew her foot, trailing hot ashes as she regained her balance….
And in that moment she thought, I was wrong.
Wrong not only about her mother and what she was capable of, had always been capable of for so many years, all the way back to the time when her father had conveniently disappeared so that her mother could take absolute control of the household, but wrong about other things as well.
It wasn't Emma, Lizzie's sister, who gave Andrew Borden forty whacks. It was Abby, his hateful second wife and Lizzie's domineering stepmother, who had known he was about to change the will, leaving everything to his beloved daughters. It was Abby who sneaked back into the house instead of visiting an imaginary sick friend, in order to have it out with him one last time while Emma was gone and Lizzie and Bridget were outside. And when her pleas and her threats failed she turned finally to the hatchet by the back door and came at him in the dayroom with the rage of thwarted ambition. And when Lizzie went in and saw him like that she understood what had happened and ran up to the witchmother's bedroom with the full measure of her hatred unleashed at last and took up the blade and paid Abby back in kind, giving her everything she deserved, only that and nothing more. Bridget carried the hatchet and Lizzie's bloody clothes out of the house and said nothing because by then she herself was an accessory to murder. And the two sisters stood firm, one of whom was both guilty and innocent, one who had loved and yet turned to the darkness in a moment of righteousness that shone with its own black light, one who had killed and not killed, who lied and did not lie, who had done the only thing left in the face of the evil that she refused to call Mother….
And as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place and Jenny's understanding became complete, time resumed its normal flow again and she saw only Libby, a pile at her feet, blood pumping out of the cleft in her skull.
She fell to her knees and pressed the sides of Libby's head with her hands, trying to hold it together, but there was too much to fit back in and the wound would not close.
She looked around the room.
"Where are you?" she cried.
She heard a whimpering.
Her mother had withdrawn, run away, shocked and injured. Now there was a rustling in the corner, a shadow on the wall, a flicker in the hall to the kitchen. The woman was able to move more swiftly than Jenny had imagined.
What about her hip? That was a lie to get sympathy. To avoid attending the wedding of which she so strenuously disapproved, because Lee was only a freelance television writer and not rich. And then to lure her daughter back home. But it had not worked. And it would not work now. None of her lies would ever work again.
"Come here!" Jenny shouted, expecting to see her grinning from the fireplace or hanging from the ceiling like a great black bat.
In the kitchen, the back door creaked open and closed.
"Then I'll come to you," Jenny said through gritted teeth, and went after her.
The backyard was bare. The other half of the elm tree had split and fallen over the wall but now the power lines were dark and quiet, the broken wires burned through and dangling from the branches like charred snakes. At the edge of the yard a bush breathed in the wind.
She grasped the poker in both hands and headed for it.
There was the whimpering again, but from the side of the house, and accompanied now by echoing footsteps.
Leaving the yard, she saw that the sidewalk was empty under an enormous moon. On the main path trees and shrubbery pulsed in the darkness. A shape blew along the path, too large and too swift to be a shadow.
"Wait for me, Mother!" she yelled. "I've got something for you!"
Jenny started for the path, then remembered the shortcut across the grounds. She bypassed the paved walkway and pressed deeper into the darkness.
Somewhere beyond the trees, a man was calling for his son to come home. Doors cracked open and people shuffled out of the buildings. Wobbling flashlight beams stroked the air and candles guttered in windows as if Halloween were already here.
It is, Jenny thought, and ran on, holding the poker like a sword.
Halfway across an open glade, she stumbled into a hole. There was a mass of spilled garbage at the bottom, leaking out of a ripped plastic bag. She got up and scraped her foot on the grass to remove its slime. Then the wind blew the smell into her nostrils and she retched. It was a dead dog that had gone stiff with rigor mortis, its forelegs frozen as if pawing the air. She prodded with the poker and its body slid deeper into the hole, leaving its head behind.
Nice work, Mother, she thought.
Then she wiped her mouth and moved on.
She crossed the next rise and came out by the pool. It swelled and ebbed like the tides of the sea under the moon's pull. All the chairs were in the water now, drifting under the surface like white jellyfish.
Beyond the pool were the rec room and the front gate.
She'll go for the way out, Jenny thought. But there isn't any way out now.
She was not here yet.
Somewhere a siren screamed and somewhere closer a truck gunned its engine and roared around a corner. Somewhere people where climbing timidly up and down stairways as faces lit by candles appeared and disappeared behind windows in a ghostly procession from one room to the next. And somewhere heavy footsteps clacked on the stones of a path, grinding broken glass, drawing near.
Jenny set her back against the wrought iron railing and waited.
Now a little boy came shambling across the grass toward the pool. He moved jerkily, unsure of his direction. He saw Jenny and broke into a run.
"Help!" he said. "Come quick! Please…"
"What's the matter?"
"Just come!"
Back at the top of the rise, there was another shape on the grass, only a few yards from the hole. He was hard to recognize at first, caked with dirt and mud.
She dropped the poker and tried to lift him in her arms.
"Lee! What happened? Where…?"
"Home," he said into her ear, his words slurring and blowing away on the wind. "Going home, Jen."
She held him tightly, caressing his hair, kissing his head. Some of his hair came away in her hand, along with a piece of his scalp. There was a long, deep gash under the flap. His collar and his shirt were warm and moist but his body was cold as ice.
"She killed him!" the little boy blubbered.
From the other side of the rise, Jenny heard the heavy footsteps on the path.
The footsteps stopped.
Now there was only silence.
"Go," she said to the boy. "Run, as fast as you can…."
"Do we have to bury him?"
"Get out of here, before it's too late!"
The boy ran off.
Jenny had to get up in time. But she could not let go of him as he grew even colder in her arms.
"Leave him be, Jennifer," said a woman's voice. "He's not one of us."
"Neither am I," said Jenny, laying him down carefully in the grass.
Then she dove for the poker.
A heavy shoe came down on her hand.
"How can you hint me like this, Jennifer? I tried to discipline you…."
Jenny yanked at the ankle with her other hand. The woman toppled back, her head hitting the ground. Then Jenny was on her feet, raising the poker high.
"What are you doing? You can't lift a hand to your own mother!"
"Watch me," Jenny said, tightening her grip.
The poker missed the head and struck the shoulder instead. The woman grunted and scrambled for her weapon. Before Jenny could strike again, she was up.
"You're not my daughter!" the woman hissed. "I don't know who you are!"
The axe met the poker in midair. Jenny felt two of her fingers break.
"I don't know, either," she said.
At the sound of the clanging, faces disappeared from windows and candles went out No one came to help.
Good, she thought. Now I can do this my way.
The axe came down again. Jenny kicked the woman in the stomach. The air went out of her for a moment, but then she rose again to her full height and finished her swing.
Jenny sidestepped, following the motion and wrestling the axe out of her hands.
When the woman saw what Jenny was holding, she ran away over the rise.
There was only one way out.
Jenny quickly outdistanced her, stopping at the pool enclosure and turning, ready.
The woman ran at her, hit the railing, doubled up as it almost cut her in half, and went over.
Jenny swung the axe after her, striking iron. Sparks flew. Then she jumped over the wrought iron and into the enclosure.
She turned, her back to the rail. The axe was too heavy to swing again. She held it sideways and aimed the blade at the woman's wattled throat, just below the chin, where the head was attached to the spinal column.
"They'll know it was you!" She was still grinning her impossible grin. "They'll see, and they'll know! You're insane! You're—"
"And you're dead," Jenny said.
Like all the others, she thought. Like my friend. Like my husband. Like you, you miserable cunt.
She set the sole of one foot against the railing, bent her legs and sprang forward, holding the blade in front of her.
The head came off at the shoulders.
A bell-shaped spray shot forth from the torso, drenching Jenny like hot rain.
Then the head sailed on in a high arc through the air. It came down on the water with a pink splash and floated for a few seconds as the pool became dark Finally the hair caught on the upturned leg of one of the submerged chairs, drifting around it in a slow semicircle, like a boat at anchor, before sinking without a trace.